careen

present singular third person careens · participle present careening · participle past careened · past careened

1. transitivenauticalTo heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other, in order to clean it of barnacles and weed, or to repair it below the water line.

   1 more example

   However, to avoid ſome inconveniencies relating to port duties, which would have been demanded in the port of Canton, and could not, in honour to the British flag, be complied with by us, he adviſed Mr Anſon to put into the harbour of Typa, about ſix miles from Macao, where he might careen his ſhip without diſturbance ; and actually ſent us a pilot to conduct us ſafe to the intended birth.

   1749 July, “Anſon's voyage of the world”, in The Scots Magazine, volume xi, pages 333-334

2. intransitivenauticalTo tilt on one side.

   Synonyms: heel

3. intransitiveTo lurch or sway violently from side to side.

   They were not motionless, but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out of one sky-light into another, as if the universe and not the air-ship was careening.

   1909, E. M. Forster, “Chapter I”, in The Machine Stops

4. intransitiveTo tilt or lean while in motion.First known use late 19th c.
5. USintransitiveTo career, to move rapidly straight ahead, to rush carelessly.First known use at least early 20th c.
6. USintransitiveTo move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way.

   The tragedy is immediate, real, epic and unfolding before our eyes. But it isn’t new. It is the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years.

   2020 April 3, Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal”, in Financial Times, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC

   3 more examples

   The car in which I had taken Olivia to dinner and then out to the cemetery — a historic vehicle, even a monument of sorts, in the history of fellatio's advent onto the Winesburg campus in the second half of the twentieth century — went careening off to the side and turned end-over-end down Lower Main until it exploded in flames...

   2008, Philip Roth, Indignation

   He tries for a lot of things, careening wildly from earnest romance to feel-good comedy to hackneyed suspense, all the while leaving it up to the audience to suss out the moral complexity and existential terror underneath the glossy surface.

   2016 December 20, Katie Rife, “Passengers strains the considerable charms of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the original on 23 Apr 2018

   Argentina may be an unlikely place for a billionaire looking for stability. The country has careened through nearly a century of instability, marred by military coups and spectacular financial collapses epitomized by triple-digit inflation.

   2026 May 28, Emma Bubola, Ryan Mac, “Why Peter Thiel Is Decamping to the End of the World”, in The New York Times

plural careens

1. nauticalThe position of a ship laid on one side.